


(the problem with) wanting

by belowtheprecipice



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Post-Book 1: King of Scars, Post-Book 3: Ruin and Rising, Ruin and Rising Spoilers, Turn back if you haven't read KOS, king of scars spoilers, not anti-Mal, possible ROW speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:28:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29727639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belowtheprecipice/pseuds/belowtheprecipice
Summary: After everything, Alina still seeks out shadows in the middle of the night
Relationships: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	(the problem with) wanting

It had been three years, and she still sought out dark corners. In the late nights and dreary mornings, she would throw on her robe and walk from room to room, standing in doorways and looking down dark halls and wondering if she might see a familiar face. The children sometimes found her, and she could always carry them back to bed and say she was looking out for monsters. 

It wasn’t a lie. 

She knew it was silly, but she still felt a stab of loneliness and disappointment when no shadows moved and the night remained still. She loathed to admit it, but she wished to see the Darkling waiting for her with his doomed smile and deadly eyes. 

Her husband never said anything about her wanderings. Even if he did understand, he didn’t stop her. He had his own ghosts that visited him in his sleep, sending him into fits of panic that only subsided when she held him and reminded him they were alive. 

The Darkling was her ghost. 

Sometimes, she would sit in her darkened study and try to summon light, only to feel a void where her magic might have been. It was the one part of him—the one part of  _ them _ —that she always hoped might still be left in the world, but it was gone. 

She never felt anything.

Maybe it was because she wasn’t the Sun-Summoner anymore. 

Maybe it was because the Darkling was truly dead, after all.

The suspicion that he could return from the dead drove her on her walks, but she never confided in anyone. She had killed him with her own hands, after all. If she of all people decided that there was even a  _ chance _ he wasn’t dead, Nikolai would spiral into a panic. 

Only she knew the depth of their power, and she knew that the raw power they had both possessed was enough to defy all logic… and death itself. 

And, beyond the analytical part of her brain that understood their power, the part of her brain that held onto private, secret moments always had a nagging feeling that she was never truly alone. Especially not when she walked in the night. 

Yet he was never in the dark corners of Keramzin. And Alina Starkov figured that if the Darkling revived himself, he’d want to let her know first.

* * *

A shadow moved.

Alina swore she imagined it after so many years of nothing happening. But a shadow at the end of the hallway to her study  _ moved _ and Alina followed it down the hall as it ducked through the closed door into her study, heart pounding loud enough to wake the dead. She didn’t let herself believe it was happening and told herself she only followed the shadow because, if there was an intruder in her orphanage, she would personally force them out. 

Alina braced herself for disappointment. She was sure she’d throw open the door to her study to find it completely empty. She’d scold herself for believing otherwise in the first place before returning to her husband’s arms. Even when she would surely find the study empty, it would be one more reminder that she couldn’t just move on. 

With one hand on the cool wood of the door, Alina gave herself one last chance to let the past die. 

Instead, she entered the study and saw she wasn’t alone.

He leaned against her desk, his face caught in moonlight as he examined the sizable collection of maps she hung on the study’s walls. He was still, and she realized that for once, she had snuck up on him. Alina stole the moment, and she drank him in—his quiet power, the familiar fold of his arms, the unusual softness in his face as he stared at the maps. There was no way he could be looking at the finer details, the notes and legends, but he must have been able to see the general shape, the familiar landmarks, unchanged after war. 

“Aleksander,” she breathed. It was a name she only said in her most private prayers, committed only to her memory and nowhere else. 

At the sound of his name, he turned to her with an instant and involuntary reaction. Alina never told anyone his name. There was power in knowing him, in holding that secret, and she selfishly held it close to her heart. 

“Alina,” he said. Something thick lined his voice, and if Alina allowed herself to be tricked for just a moment, she could imagine it was shock of his own. 

They stood in the moonlight, regarding each other in silence. Alina had never forgotten a detail of his face, not a single scar, but seeing the Darkling kissed by moonlight made something twist in her gut. 

She had held his body, She had wept over him as he turned cold. She smoothed his hair and kissed his forehead and held him longer than she should have. She helped prepare his body for the prye, and she bore the weight of her friends’ judgement for her grief. 

“They told me you died in the Fold,” the Darkling said. 

“I told them you did, too,” Alina replied, and the Darkling smiled. 

“I did die, Alina,” the Darkling said. “It wasn’t a lie.”

He stepped closer to her, and dozens of nights flashed in her mind. Some were filled with anger and fighting, some with quiet and loneliness, and some with a desire that Alina had tried shoving away and burying for years. 

“Did you mourn me?” the Darkling asked, his voice softer than Alina would have guessed. 

Alina wanted to tell him to leave. She wanted to tell him that she was no longer his Sun-Summoner, his Sankta Alina, his weapon. She wanted to tell him that she had made a life filled with happiness and love and it didn’t involve him. She wanted to tell him she was her own person who found her own power and her own strength.

She wanted to tell him that she had never loved him.

Instead, she said, “Every day.”

His quartz eyes shone and Alina felt a pang at the realization she couldn’t ever try to commit his face to canvas. The Darkling reached out to touch her hair, which she had grown fond of keeping at her shoulders. He had never seen her hair so short when they were both alive, and Alina allowed him close. She fought to ignore the brush of his fingers against her jaw. 

“How are you alive?” Alina asked. The Darkling frowned. 

“Must we get into details?” the Darkling asked. “Is it not enough that we’re together?”

_ Together _ . The word echoed through Alina like a footstep in an empty chapel.

He shifted his hand and cupped her cheek. She knew to pull away. He was her past haunting her present. She was happily married. The Alina he knew was ash. This was the first step down a path she could never return from. 

She let his hand remain on her. 

“I watched your body burn,” Alina said, her voice quiet. She could still smell the smoke, and it sometimes suffocated her dreams, forcing her awake as she gasped for air. 

“They’re selling your bones all over Ravka,” the Darkling said. “I thought you were dead. Your princeling told me so, and when I saw pieces of Sankta Alina being sold for scraps…”

The Darkling stopped, and Alina knew she wasn’t imagining the emotion in his voice. 

“Why are you here?” Alina asked, and he tried to put his old look of arrogance onto his face, but she knew it was for show. She would always know where Aleksander ended and the Darkling began. 

“Isn’t it obvious? I clearly have some sort of plan—”

“Yes, I guessed that. You’re predictable. I want to know, why are you  _ here _ ?”

The Darkling’s expression turned pained, and Alina, unbidden, leaned her head into his palm, accepting the real warmth that came from it. 

“I had to know for myself,” the Darkling said. “I had to know if the one person in this world who truly understood everything was dead.” 

“You were worried,” Alina said, a little stunned. The Darkling looked away, and Alina took the chance to polish the memory of his jawline. 

“All I had to do was reach for you,” the Darkling said. “And then I was standing in the hallway.”

“Where are you right now?” Alina asked. He had mentioned Nikolai, so it was entirely possible he was tucked away in a neat little dungeon cell in Os Atla. It’s where she  _ hoped _ he was. 

“Why? Would you like to visit?” the Darkling asked.

“I don’t think my husband would like that,” Alina said, and she knew nothing she could have said would have slapped him as hard as those words did. Naked pain crossed his face, and Alina watched him figure out what he would say to the revelation. 

She felt disgust at the pain in her own voice when she had said it. 

“Well, I’m sure that given the circumstances, the  _ otkazat'sya _ wouldn’t mind a trip to the Little Palace,” the Darkling said. “It’ll be the honeymoon I’m sure you never had.”

“I don’t involve myself in Ravka’s affairs anymore,” Alina said, ignoring the insult lodged at Mal. 

If revealing her marriage had been a slap, then that had been kicking him when he was already down. The Darkling pulled his hand away from her face, as if the admission had burned him. 

“At all?” he asked in his disbelief. Alina shook her head. “That would be why you haven’t visited me yet. I was so sure yours would be the next footsteps I’d hear.” 

“You think I’d visit you in your cell?”

“You haven’t asked me to leave yet.”

“Would you leave if I asked?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t,” Alina said. “Not yet.”

The Darkling nodded, and Alina wished to cut out her treasonous heart.

“Why come back here? You’re in Keramzin, are you not?” the Darkling asked.

“I never wanted any of it. You know that,” Alina sighed.

“You grew into ruling,” the Darkling said. “You even became  _ good _ at it. There’s no one else I would have rather been killed by.”

Alina chose not to look at him, instead sitting at the bench under her window and staring at the moon. She had once been able to make herself shine twice as bright. She had once felt powerful and strong. 

She had once been Alina Starkov. Sankta Alina.

“Sometimes,” she started, and then paused. She had been happy over the past three years, but there were some things she could never tell Mal. They were too far away from the woman he loved, remnants of a power that had turned her into a savior and a weapon. When they had forsaken their names and glory and returned to Keramzin, there had been a silent promise to bury the soldiers they had once been. 

But, to Alina, that meant burying half of herself. 

The man who stood before her was the Darkling, and she knew she shouldn’t share anything. Anything she had ever given him—her power, her home, her heart—he used to hurt her. But, the loneliness she constantly endured was something only the Darkling understood. She knew sharing anything with the Darkling was a fool’s move, but she wanted to crack open the secret she had hidden in herself for three years.

And that was the problem with wanting, she knew. It made her weak.

“I won’t tell anyone,” the Darkling said, sincerity piercing Alina’s heart in a way she knew was far too dangerous. 

“Sometimes, I want to be the Sun-Summoner again,” Alina admitted. “I want everything I lost.”

The unspoken implication hung in the air. Alina wasn’t sure if either of them breathed. 

She had never told Mal what she truly wanted. She had never told Nikolai or Genya or Zoya. When Mal held her after her body was burned and asked her what came next, she said she wanted him and a simple, quiet life. As they rebuilt the orphanage, she said she wanted to teach the children art. When Nikolai visited, she teased that she wanted more funding to build a new wing of the house. 

Every time she saw the troika arrive, carrying her friends in their keftas so they might brag about how the newest Grisha were training or complain about the chore of court politics, Alina felt a deep jealousy dig into her heart. 

That had been her life.

That was what she really wanted. 

She hadn’t realized until Keramzin was complete and children ran through the yard and she and Mal watched from an upstairs window. Fresh paint still filled the air, and where that might have once filled her with a calm sense of purpose, a pit of dread instead opened up in her stomach. 

_ This _ was her life, and now she was too far downstream to turn back. 

The realization had kept Alina up all night, and she oftentimes found herself wanting to scream.

She was the Sun-Summoner, and she had been extinguished. 

She wanted it all back. 

“Then do it,” the Darkling said. “Summon your light.”

Alina nearly laughed at him, letting a sad smile pull up one corner of her mouth. Of course, for him it was as easy as  _ doing _ . He had brought himself back from the next world through sheer stubbornness, refusing to accept that the story was over, and it was time for everyone involved to move onto new threats. 

“It’s gone,” Alina said. The finality of the statement broke her heart just as much as it had in the days following her victory on the Fold. 

“Try again.”

“I won’t disappoint both of us,” Alina said. 

The Darkling had said once that there was no one else like them in the world. She had left him alone. The thought devastated her. 

Joining her at the window seat, the Darkling slid his hands under hers. Despite combing through every memory between them again and again, Alina was shocked to remember just how expressive the Darkling could be. There was an open gentleness in his face as he pulled her hands between them and ran a thumb over her palm.

“Please, Alina. Just let me,” the Darkling said, and Alina was jolted back to another night, another meeting. 

_ Let me _ .

It was easy to close her eyes and search for a light that had long since been snuffed within her. The Darkling was an amplifier, and she wasn’t sure if it was because he was touching her or if their power had finally been reborn—

Light spilled from her hands. Alina’s eyes flew open and she took a deep, shuddering breath, unsure as to if she would cry or scream or laugh. 

The void that had eaten away at her for three years, taunting her at every sunbeam, was gone. Instead it was filled with the beautiful, brilliant light that had once given her the strength to understand herself. 

The Darkling pressed his forehead to Alina’s as tears sprung, unbidden, to her eyes. A small shadow wrapped around the light as if reuniting with an old friend. 

“We’re alive,” he said. “Ravka doesn’t know it yet, but we’re alive.”

“I’ll have to stop you again,” Alina said, letting the light fade—she didn't want a curious child on a late-night trip to the kitchen to see the light. She kept their foreheads pressed, knowing she should recoil from his touch, from his proximity. 

It had been years since she felt so complete. 

“Alina,” the Darkling said, a genuine smile on his face. “To die by your blade was my greatest honor. I’d welcome it again and again.” 

Despite knowing what surely came next—the fighting, the pain, the disruption of her quiet life—Alina smiled at the Darkling, unsure if she felt hate or love and knowing it didn’t matter what it was.

Their faces were still close, and a moment hung between them, infinite and unwritten. 

But Alina wasn’t the girl he once knew. 

“Goodbye, Aleksander,” she said. There was no room for him to overstay his welcome. At the sound of his name, the Darkling shuddered once more, dipping his head low and kissing her hands. They still glowed like the final embers of a fire, and his lips were a gentle brush that sent her heart hammering.

“Goodbye,  _ moi Sankta _ ,” the Darkling said. 

He was gone in an instant, and Alina sat alone in her study. Her hands still glowed and they were warmer than they would have been without being held. Those were the only signs that she hadn’t imagined the entire thing. 

Some time passed as the moon travelled across the sky, but Alina paid no mind. Instead she remembered what the Darkling and Baghra had taught her. The light sprung to her hands, bright and alive. She twisted it into complex shapes and angles and delighted at it’s response. In the bottom drawer of her desk lay a compact mirror, and she used it as she had once used mirrors in battle. 

There was a creak behind her, and Mal watched silently from the doorway. Alina wanted to be ashamed. She wanted to hide her powers and pretend nothing was wrong so they might go back to playing pretend in a life she didn’t actually want. 

Instead, she let the light burn brighter in her hands, a confirmation to the question her husband was too afraid to ask.

There was a sorrow on his face she had only seen a handful of times before. 

“We— _ I _ need to get to Nikolai tomorrow,” Alina said. Nikolai,  _ not _ the Darkling. 

“We’ll go together,” Mal said. 

Alina smiled at him, thankful for his lack of questions and faith in her. He left the room, either to go back to sleep or make travel arrangements, and Alina looked at the strange shadows her light cast through the room.

She swore she saw some move. 

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts since I finished King of Scars in 2019, but for some reason I could never get the words to come out correctly. Between the approaching Rule of Wolves release, today's trailer, and the INCREDIBLE fic 'Stolen Lullabies' by destinies, the stars finally aligned for me to finish and edit this fic. 
> 
> Here's hoping for our Alina appearance in Rule of Wolves!


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